Huge amounts of information are exchanged among participants in teleconferences (meaning conversations, i.e., oral exchanges, between two or more participants over a communication network, including both telephone and packet networks). In many organizations, teleconferences are recorded and available for subsequent review. Even when the teleconferences are transcribed to textual form, however, reviewing the records is so time-consuming that the vast majority of the information cannot be exploited.
A number of tools have been developed to automate the extraction of information from teleconferences. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2014/0278377 describes arrangements relating to automatically taking notes in a virtual meeting. The virtual meeting has meeting content that includes a plurality of meeting content streams. One or more of the meeting content streams is in a non-text format. The one or more meeting content streams in a non-text format can be converted into text. As a result, the plurality of meeting content streams is in text format. The text of the plurality of meeting content streams can be analyzed to identify a key element within the text. Consolidated system notes that include the key element can be generated.
As another example, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2004/0021765 describes an automated meeting facilitator, which manages and archives a telemeeting. The automated meeting facilitator includes a multimedia indexing section, which generates rich transcriptions of the telemeeting and stores documents related to the telemeeting. Through the rich transcription, the automated meeting facilitator is able to provide a number of real-time search and assistance functions to the meeting participants.
Some automated tools relate to topics of discussions. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2014/0229471 describes a method, computer program product, and system for ranking meeting topics. A plurality of participants in an electronic meeting is identified. One or more interests associated with one or more individuals included in the plurality of participants are identified. One or more topics associated with the meeting are received. A ranking of the one or more topics is determined based upon, at least in part, the one or more identified interests.
Automated analysis of teleconferences can be particularly useful in the context of enterprise contact centers. For example, in this regard U.S. Pat. No. 8,611,523 describes a method and system for analyzing an electronic communication, more particularly, to analyzing a telephone communication between a customer and a contact center to determine communication objects, forming segments of like communication objects, determining strength of negotiations between the contact center and the customer from the segments, and automating setup time calculation.
As another example, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0104086 describes a system and method for automatic call segmentation including steps and means for automatically detecting boundaries between utterances in the call transcripts; automatically classifying utterances into target call sections; automatically partitioning the call transcript into call segments; and outputting a segmented call transcript. A training method and apparatus for training the system to perform automatic call segmentation includes steps and means for providing at least one training transcript with annotated call sections; normalizing the at least one training transcript; and performing statistical analysis on the at least one training transcript.